The case of the disorganized organs

This undated photo provided by the Bentley family shows Rose Marie Bentley, before the end of her life. Bentley lived with all her internal organs, except for her heart, on the wrong side. Cameron Walker's medical students in his Oregon Health & Science University were examining the heart of Bentley's body, when they noticed the blood vessels were different. When they opened the abdominal cavity, they discovered all the other organs were on the wrong side. (Courtesy Bentley Family via AP)AP

Every so often a story comes along that knocks my socks off, as the saying goes. This one begins in an anatomy class dissection lab at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Medical student Warren Nielsen and his four lab partners were preparing to examine their team’s cadaver, which now lay on the silvery slab in the chilly laboratory.

There was a palpable air of excitement in the lab (and also a slight smell of formaldehyde) as Nielsen’s fellow students gathered at the other 15 autopsy tables, similarly preparing their preserved bodies for dissection.

They were all excited to see first-hand the many miracles of the human body, which they had so far only studied in textbooks.

The cadaver that Nielsen’s team had been assigned was that of a 99-year-old woman who had died of natural causes. That was all they knew of their subject, as strict rules of anonymity are enforced regarding the people who donate their bodies to science. But now, since the family has given their permission, her identity can be revealed.

The woman’s name was Rose Marie Bentley, and she was about to confound not only the medical students, but also the anatomy professors, who had likely seen hundreds of such dissections in their careers.

But first a little background on the star of the show: Rose Marie Phelps (Bentley was her married name) was born in 1918 in Waldport, a tiny town on the Oregon coast. She was the youngest of four in her family, and she later informed her own children that as the youngest child, she had been babied.

“Mom readily admitted that she had been a spoiled youngster,” said Bentley’s daughter, Patti Helmig, who at 78 is the oldest of Bentley’s five children.

Bentley had always been fascinated by science, and Helmig recalled that her mother would have made an excellent nurse, if only she had been given the opportunity. But such dreams were unattainable in the little Oregon town of Waldport, and Bentley eventually became a hairdresser.

During the Second World War, Bentley volunteered for work in the nurse’s aide corps. And according to Helmig, was “thrilled when someone reached out to her about doing a study on smallpox survivors, which she had as a child.”

So back to the medical school class. In this particular class, Neilsen and his classmates were assigned to open the body’s chest cavity to closely examine the heart. But upon cursory examination, Neilsen and his lab mates, even with their limited anatomical knowledge, had some questions.

They called their professors over and asked “Where is her interior vena cava? Are we missing it? Have we gone crazy?

“The professors kind of rolled their eyes,” remembers Neilsen. “Like … how can these students miss such a big vessel as the vena cava?”

What they were all about to find out was that Bentley had a condition called situs inversus with levocardia, in which most of a body’s vital organs are reversed. It was almost like someone had held up a mirror to her body and what was on the right was now on the left and vice versa.

According to news reports of this phenomenon, Bentley’s unique condition, along with a host of other weird abnormalities, made this specimen almost like a unicorn.

“I think the odds of finding another person like her may be as remote as one in 50 million,” said assistant professor Cameron Walker, who teaches the Foundations of Clinical Anatomy class at the Oregon university. “I don’t think any of us will ever forget it.”

In addition to Bentley’s misplace vena cava, she also had a number of other startling irregularities. According to Professor Walker, instead of having her stomach on the left, her stomach was on the right. Her liver, which normally is placed predominantly on the left, was on the right. The positions of her spleen, her digestive tract and the ascending colon were also inverted. He added that Bentley’s condition is usually associated with severe heart defects, which was not the case in this instance.

“That is almost certainly the factor that contributed to her long life,” he added.

One reporter asked Bentley’s daughter what her mother would say to all of this.